


hope by any other name

by millennialfalcon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: AU, Angst, Brother-Sister Relationships, Character Study, Familial Relationships, Force Ghosts, Force Sensitivity, Nadeen Organa Solo, OC, One Shot, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, Skywalker Family Drama, Uncle-Niece Relationship, youngest sibling angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 08:23:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15457233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millennialfalcon/pseuds/millennialfalcon
Summary: The problem, Nadeen thinks, is that somewhere between all of this — her political mother, her absent father, a brother folding in on himself, and an uncle who doesn’t understand — is her. The problem is that all the seats are taken, and she’s left with standing room only.:'amal jadid:





	hope by any other name

The problem, Nadeen thinks, is that between Mom and Dad and Ben, Uncle Luke doesn’t have a lot left to give her. Sure, there were those early days sitting in the courtyard of her house, him teaching her breathing exercises and clasping her shoulders with gentle hands. The sticky heat of Chandrila’s capital city weighed on her skin and the urban sounds of the city were not too far off, but the quiet timber of Uncle Luke’s voice guided her to her own peace. Eventually, the courtyard would fade away, the noise would dissipate, and her meditating mind would form a cocoon around her, enveloping her small frame in a different kind of weight that allowed her body to relax for what often felt like the first time in weeks. All the while, Uncle Luke’s steady hands kept her tethered to reality.

But that’s so long ago, now. Years. A different lifetime, where she had calloused feet from running along the stone paths by the stream and dirt under her fingernails; when she would break off branches of low hanging trees to use as swords – without the bright light and hum of energy. She remembers that lifetime, in the quiet moments sitting atop the courtyard wall, her legs dangling over the aged, smooth stone ledge and she looks out into the wilderness. Her eyes close and the setting sun warms her face as it disappears below the horizon, and she feels everything flowing through her, and she remembers.

She remembers it most when Mom and Dad are shouting at each other, throwing words they don’t really mean (they secretly do) like neutron bombs that eventually explode in the kitchen, hard voices imbedding into the ceiling. It’s those times when she’s standing just beyond the doorway that she remembers her uncle’s soft voice: “In for five, hold for two, out for seven. Rein in your power, Nadeen.” She does the breathing exercises more often than not, trying to wrangle the electricity she feels sparking between her fingers, surges that grow stronger with every shout. It’s harder than it sounds; she’s sent many cups and glasses flying into many walls, mostly on accident, but some on purpose. The crash usually gets her parent’s attention, which is a win in her mind.

Ben used to help her control it. Ben used to do a lot of things. Ben used to have nice words to give her instead of heavy ones. But the bright cerulean of his saber lights the side of his face in a way that makes it look put together wrong. He stopped helping long before she stopped asking.

Now she’s nine and not sure what to do. Uncle Luke doesn’t walk with her in the mornings anymore, doesn’t smile at her like he used to — not since he started teaching. His forehead is always wrinkled nowadays, lines framing his mouth and around his eyes. When he does smile, it’s barely for a second, and Nadeen can tell it’s never real. Mom says he’s got other things to worry about right now. “He’s has the school now, sweetheart,” she says, always pouring over Alliance reports and senate documents, never looking up at her daughter. “You uncle has a lot on his mind these days.” Sometimes she sees Uncle Luke when he visits, with Ben in tow, but it’s like he doesn’t know what to say to her – what she wants to hear. I just want to hear you, Nadeen wants to say. Just tell me that I’m okay. Tell me I’m normal. Her mouth never moves like she wants it to, and Uncle Luke ends up walking passed her without so much as a wave.

Getting Dad to talk about anything lately is like pulling teeth – or rather, pulling power converters out of the Falcon’s modulator. Nadeen’s stopped trying to do both.

They say, “When you’re older, you’ll learn,” but she feels so much older already and she can’t control the thing growing inside her like a thistle, poking and sticking into the walls of her heart. “When you’re older, you can go train with your brother.” Every time Mom tells her this, Nadeen slinks back into herself. She can’t tell her mom she doesn’t want to be like her brother. She can’t say that Ben looks at her different. Bad different. Different in the way that his eyes get dark when she practices Uncle Luke’s teachings, lifting small pebbles in the air and turning them over to see the beetles and worms stuck underneath. “You’re doing it wrong,” he mumbles through his teeth, easily waving his hand in front of hers, and the stones vibrate in the air.

“Let me do it, Ben,” she protests, struggling to keep control of them with a trembling hand, grasp faltering. Sweat breaks out on her forehead as she grapples with her brother, pushing him away with her mind. “I can do it!” He always pushes back so much harder, harder than he needs to, but she’s got her mother’s resilience (and, she hears, her grandfather’s stubbornness). But the stone crumbles in midair, fragments spattering against her face and breaking her concentration like she’s being dunked in the lake at midnight. Ben never stays long enough to see her tears, and she stopped running after him. She stopped reaching out for him because when she does she feels something else tangled around him, and whatever it is, it’s greasy and cold and dark.

It seems Nadeen stopped doing a lot of things, too.

Now she’s nine, and she can move things much larger than pebbles. She can feel whispers against the back of her brain, tingles against her spine, long forgotten memories that might not even be hers. She wants to ask to her uncle what they mean but every time he’s on planet, he’s in hushed whispers with Mom and Dad, large, aged hands clasping their shoulders. Artoo quickly ushers her out of the room with promises of an X-Wing simulation, but not before she can meet the eyes of her family over the astromech’s domed top. She would ask what they were talking about, but she knows they won’t tell her – at least, not the truth. So she just stares at them, into the brown eyes her parents share that look nothing like hers. Uncle Luke’s energy is distant, fossilizing more every time she reaches out to him. He does not look over his shoulder at her, and Nadeen’s arms tense – there’s a heavy weight in her hands even though they’re barren and empty. She hears her brother’s name in hushed tones as Artoo leads her out into the courtyard, her feet shuffling against the stone.

Nadeen’s dreams are becoming more frequent; she sees people in her room that she knows, yet doesn’t ever remember meeting them. She thinks one person might be Grandfather: a towering man tethered to the ground like a rooted oak, his dark cloak flowing around him in a breeze she can’t feel. His hair is blonde, like hers, and his eyes are blue, like hers; she can see her uncle’s eyes in him, too, light and gentle. Sometimes he tries to talk, but no sound leaves his moving lips. She sits up in her bed and watches him, standing there by her bookcase in the silver moonlight, and he smiles — smiles like he’s…proud of her. When Nadeen starts to ask him what it was she did right so she can do it again, her eyes flutter open and she wakes up lying flat on her bed.

Some nights — the nights when there is no moon lighting her room and silent tears lull her to sleep — a woman she can’t quite place visits her, and sits on the edge of her bed. She’s a regal looking woman with long blue robes that twinkle light they’re made of stars, and flowers in her thick, dark hair. The woman never talks. She has sad eyes that sparkle with tears always threatening to spill over. Her soft, barely-there hand strokes Nadeen’s hair until Nadeen falls back into a dreamless sleep.

Nadeen doesn’t know her mother well, but this women has her hair, and her eyes, and that’s enough for Nadeen to pretend.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, if you’ve made it here, thanks for reading!
> 
> Nadeen is an OC that I’ve had for a very long time, and it’s nice to get a little slice of her out onto the interweb. There is so much more where this came from; I’m fiddling with the idea of posting more.


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